The sign (') used to indicate the omission of one or more letters in a word (whether pronounced or unpronounced), to indicate the possessive case, or to indicate plurals of abbreviations and symbols, which being an eliding mark derived from "turn away"; see swung dash, elision, punctuation, compare quotation marks. Also, a digression in the form of an address to someone not present, or to a personified object or idea; see strophe, soliloquy, verse.